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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

What a Week

My first week at the new job was a whirlwind that has left me physically and mentally exhausted, not to mention off the internet for most of the week, but I’m feeling oddly energized at the same time.  By today at 5pm it still had that “new job” smell — helped quite a bit by my adding a few personal touches to my first real office space (as opposed to cubicle) since American Express — and I’m looking forward to shifting into high gear next week with a two-day trip up to Boston to tackle the biggest of the three titles I’m now in charge of. It’s still a weird feeling being a “Director”, but it’s a job I felt I was ready for when I was still working in marketing, well before I’d made my first sale as a rep, so I’m ready to jump in with both feet.

My third to trip to Cincinnati earlier this week once again found me sticking to the suburbs, so I’ve yet to see the city itself except for from the highway. I’m hoping to time my next trip out there to catch a baseball game, which would finally get me downtown while also being my first major league game at a park other than Shea or Yankee Stadium. The Cubs and Marlins are in town in early May…

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

March Madness

No, it’s not the basketball tournament…it’s the one-week-late March edition of your favorite NYC-centric literary journal, Spindle Magazine!

Log on now for new poetry by Roger Bonair-Agard, Gerard Sarnat, Jeanann Verlee and Beverly Wilkinson; short fiction by Tim Clancy; and creative non-fiction by Anne Germanacos.

Plus, keep an eye out next week for our featured columns: Coffee & Brooklyn, Myers Music Machine and On the 1.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Monday Mash-Up, 3/17/08

1) I am swamped. Between the start of the new job only one week away (which kicks off with a trip out to Cincinnati) and the [mostly good] stress of our impending house purchase (attorney review is winding down; inspection is on Saturday), I’m a week behind on Spindle‘s March update and am going to have to burn the midnight oil tonight, after attending a Little League Coaches meeting, to get it done for tomorrow.

2) I am thrilled. This will be the oddest and coolest job transition I’ve ever made as it’s effectively a promotion but with a change of employer and scenery. The additional responsibility is a welcome challenge, even with the sharply raised stakes, as is the opportunity to put my stamp on two more magazines. Coupled with the success of Spindle, and my not-always-clearly-thought-out career goals are starting to come to fruition. Throw in the new house, our dream house by almost every realistic definition, and the fact that in general, things seem to really be falling into place all of a sudden — ie: as I’m typing this, our lender just called me to say rates dropped and we just locked in for 5.5%! — and I find myself looking both ways 5 times before I cross the street!

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Spring Cleaning

I spent the morning updating the backends of this site and Spindle’s — WordPress 2.3.3 and Joomla 1.0.15, respectively — as well as a number of the plug-ins and modules that had new updates released recently, and finally found a new WP template I liked better than my previous one which had a couple of cosmetic bugs I never could figure out how to fix.

The picture up top is temporary, at least in size, because I ran out of time, but any feedback on the readability and functionality of everything else would be most appreciated.

PS: Yes, thanks to a hectic couple of weeks, I’m behind on the latest Spindle update which was scheduled for 3/11 but am hoping to have it ready to go on Tuesday morning!

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

The Ideal Woman

Men’s Health reports on an “ideal woman” survey by some British dating website:

There’s no accounting for taste. Some guys go for Salma Hayek, others for Jessica Simpson.

A British dating website polled 66,000 men about their female ideal and came up with someone who sounds closer to Jessica than Salma: blue eyes, long blonde hair, 5-8, 130 pounds, extremely fit, etc.

(Yes, we know Jessica has brown eyes. We were speaking generally.)

The Brits also said they like her to wear glasses sometimes, have a wacky, optimistic personality, not smoke, drink occasionally, and make less money than him.

Never mind that anyone who thinks Jessica Simpson is more attractive than Salma Hayek is crazy in my book, and we’ll ignore the apparent libidinous librarian fetish (mainly because I kind of understand that one!), it sounds like British men are a bit insecure on the financial front, what with preferring their ideal woman make less money than they do. That makes no sense to me.

Interestingly, British women are apparently superficial golddiggers, so that might explain things a little bit:

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Toys R Us Kid no more

One of the primary things that separates the men from the boys is home ownership. More than marriage or fatherhood, buying a home is arguably the biggest commitment the average person can make, because you can always get divorced and disown your kid(s), but hell hath no fury like a mortgage payment scorned!

I’ve never bought into the real estate as investment theory because first and foremost, a house should be a home, so I would never take out anything other than a traditional mortgage. (A VA loan, actually, officially the best thing to come out of my service in the Army.)  Way too many people are paying a hard price for overreaching a few years ago when their sucker adjustable rates adjusted sharply upwards and the promise of easy re-financing turned out to not be as easy as they were told it would be and their homes were suddenly worth less than they paid for them. When you buy a house to live in it, and buy one that’s within your means, barring some unexpected life-changing event, you’re going to be all right.

With our lease up at the end of June and the market in New Jersey having tanked compared to three years ago when we were looking last time, we decided to give it another shot and spent the last two weekends checking out more than 20 houses, an enlightening variety that ranged from good solid maybes to “good luck that with that!” We put a lowball bid on one last week but didn’t like the counter-offer and, after a second viewing, had some serious misgivings about its short-term prospects and didn’t put forth a second bid.

Then, completely unexpectedly, our realtor pulled a Ty Pennington and showed us a house that wasn’t on our list and was just far enough out of our price range to make us sad.

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